Atlassian Delivers Bamboo 4 Continuous Integration Server

Atlassian, a provider of collaboration software for product teams, announced Bamboo 4, the latest release of its continuous integration and delivery server.

Bamboo 4 enables software developers to automatically test code on development branches before merging with the main code line. It provides automatic plan branching and merging for distributed version control systems (DVCS) like Git and Mercurial as well as push-button plan branching for traditional version control systems (VCS), like Subversion, Perforce and CVS. This way, developers can easily and quickly integrate changes no matter which branch contains the new code. For VCS, developers can easily add a Plan Branch to the Plan, manually. Once done, Bamboo will test that branch.

"Every version control system, whether it's centralized or distributed, brings advantages to the developer but also workflow challenges, said Jean-Michel Lemieux, vice president of engineering at Atlassian, said in a statement. Bamboo 4 bakes in the best practices in workflow to make the continuous integration process more streamlined without having to know all the details. Bamboo gives software developers the best of both worldsfeature branching and continuous integrationand works the way developers work.

Bamboo provides the continuous integration, continuous deployment and release management capabilities for large and small software development teams in such organizations as General Electric, NASA, Stanford University, Verizon and Mercedes-Benz among others, Atlassian said.

Bamboo's new Test Quarantine feature is a point-click process that enables system administrators to isolate a broken test so that it can be revisited at a later time and not affect the outcome of the build. Once the tests are revamped, developers can reintroduce them with a single click. Bamboo 4 provides the count of Quarantined Tests in every build as a reminder to reincorporate them.

Bamboo 4 has deep integration with Atlassian products such as JIRA, Atlassians issue-tracking software solution, Fisheye, a source code browser and HipChat, as well as third-party plug-ins. Bamboo 4 is available for a free 30-day trial or can be purchased for on-site download for as little as $10.

Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.